


Sol 6

by peggy_hamilton



Category: The Martian (2015)
Genre: Eventual Romance, F/M, Isolation, Longing, Pining, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:42:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23098048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peggy_hamilton/pseuds/peggy_hamilton
Summary: You’re part of the Ares III crew, on sol 6 you’re left behind on Mars with Mark. How will the both of you survive and will Beck ever realise your feelings for him?
Relationships: Chris Beck/Reader
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on my tumblr justthinkingofwaystoavoidbusses
> 
> slightly edited from the original for better grammar but no plot points have been changed :)

Sol 6 was officially the worst day of your life. It had started great as can be, you were on Mars for Christ’s sake! How many other people could say that? 6 days since your arrival and while back on earth the repetitive collecting of soil would have been a bore; the fact that it was on a completely different planet made it fascinating for you.

You were busy collecting samples for your experiments and listening to the team bicker back and forth. Your body tingling when the familiar sound of Beck’s voice sounded through the comms. It was no secret that you had a crush on the doctor. Well actually it was a secret and that was the big problem because while Beck was unaware of your feelings he was developing his own for your teammate Beth.

Mark was your confidant, he had figured it all out halfway to Mars when he noticed how much you blushed when Beck came into the room. From that point on it was an endless source of teasing from Mark but it was all in jest so you didn’t mind all that much. Mark was like the older brother you never wanted but appreciated all the same. However, his teasing became an issue when Martinez picked up on it and joined in to. At least Beck hadn’t figured out yet.

When you got the call from NASA about the storm your stomach had dropped. The HAB wasn’t designed to last this long and the MAV would tip for sure. You’d only been there for 6 sols, how could you go back now? Mark suggested you wait it out and you nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, c’mon, we’ve been here for 6 sols. We just need to tie down the MAV before the storm hits and gets too bad,” you voiced.

Commander Lewis shook her head. “No, it’s too risky. Prepare for emergency evacuation.”

The team rushed into action, getting into their spacesuits and packing only the essentials- the storm was moving fast and who knew how long they would have. You would have to leave behind your box of personal items that contained your laptop and pictures of your family and the crew. You were a little bummed but it beat dying.

The team was leaving the airlock and making last checks on equipment before they opened the door to the Mars atmosphere. The MAV wasn’t planted too far away but in the eye of the storm it would be a difficult crossing. Your heart hammered in your chest but you focused on the shape of Beck in front of you. As long as you could see him everything would be fine, just don’t lose sight of him.

Lewis opened the airlock and everyone was forced to the ground by the strength of the wind. Through your comm, you could hear Martinez yell that the MAV was going to tip over. That spurred everyone into action; you made small progress. The force of the wind made it feel like you were walking through molasses and threatened to knock you over. Behind you, Mark called out to use something to secure the MAV but before anyone could respond the communications dish flew past and hit him straight on.

You looked back and he was gone.

“Mark!” You yelled out, frantically searching for your best friend but you couldn’t see far past the storm.

“Look for Watney, spread out!” Lewis ordered and you did so, stepping in the direction you assumed he would have been flung in. You couldn’t focus, you couldn’t, you wouldn’t leave your best friend behind. Tears fell down your face as the realisation that Mark was gone sunk in but you refused to admit it, still searching. Even if he was dead you had to find his body, you had to bring him home.

You could hear the team giving up. You wanted to tell them to shut up and keep looking but it wasn’t your call to make. It was only you and Lewis still outside the MAV.

“Commander, Y/L/N, you need to come inside. Now.” Beck spoke through the comms. Normally his voice would bring you comfort but now it didn’t help. The only person who truly knew about your feelings for Beck was gone. How could you live without Mark?

Lewis gave you the order to get inside and you knew there was no arguing with her on this.

“Okay.” You agreed, your voice cracking. Slowly and reluctantly you began to make your way to the MAV. By now you could barely see past the sand and debris in the air. You made your way over to where you hoped the MAV was, you could see it in your sight. The light of Lewis’ helmet was straight ahead, you were almost there when you got hit.

The other half of the communications dish was uplifted and hit you, sending you flying far away from the MAV. Tremendous pain exploded throughout your side and you were aware that the storm was carrying you further away and you weren’t even touching the ground. The pain became too much and your vision went black.

Back on the MAV, the team was alerted when your biomonitor failed, even belted into the seats Beck turned around as far as he could to Martinez at the front. “What happened?” he asked sharply.

Martinez looked lost as he tapped at the controls, “Y/L/N’s biomonitor just failed,” he told them confused and worried. “Commander?”

There was a pause before the response.

“Y/L/N got hit by debris. I’m going back out to look for them both.” She said, ready to step off the ladder.

“Y/L/N and Watney are dead, commander.” Beck said strained, he felt like his world was breaking. “We’ve lost two team members already, we can’t lose you too.”

Within a minute Lewis was seated and they were launching off the surface of Mars, the whole team was silent. No one dared speak as they looked over at the two empty seats. Beck faced away from Vogel to hide the tears that were streaming down his face.


	2. Chapter 2

“System critical.”

The automated voice woke you. You were disorientated and confused. As you peeled open your eyes all you could see was black and felt a heavy weight on top of you. Above your face, your breath condensed on the inside of the glass on your helmet and disappeared again as you breathed. You tried to move and felt the weight shift above you.

“System critical.” The voice repeated again and you realised that for some reason you were buried alive.

Briefly, you wondered why the hell you weren’t on the Hermes with the rest of the team. Then you remembered everything that happened with Watney. How you had been so close to the MAV then hit by debris yourself.

You were still on Mars, the team was on the Hermes, Watney was dead.

You gulped and pushed aside your fear. Now was not the time for a panic attack - you could do that later. Somehow you managed to control your breathing and worked out a plan. If you had been anyone else you may have been tempted to lie there and not move until you were eventually exposed to the atmosphere and died. What was the point of living if your death was certain anyway? You were scared of dying, that’s what. And buried alive on Mars is not the way you want to go.

“System critical.”

“Yes, I know.” You grumbled agitated and began to wriggle feeling the sand move above you. You pushed out your elbows to help push your torso upwards. Thankfully you weren’t buried under too much sand and the bright Martian sun shone through your helmet. Your lower half was still buried but now you could use your hands to brush and dig the sand away from your legs. When the outline of your legs was visible under the sand you attempted to stand up but screamed in pain. Frantically shoveling more sand of your leg you could see that a sharp thick piece of metal had gone all the way through your leg just below your knee.

Using your good leg you managed to stand and balance yourself. With the colossal amount of sand gone to protect you from the atmosphere your suit recognised a breach in the seal.

“Oxygen levels, 95%.”

“Shit,” you cursed harshly looking around to see where you were. The storm had dragged you at least half a mile from the HAB and you could see the building in the distance. Unfortunately, you could also see that the MAV was missing confirming you had in fact been left on Mars alone.

Painfully you began to trek to the HAB. You knew you couldn’t remove the metal in your leg just yet because you would bleed out if you did. Even so, you couldn’t hop to the HAB. You tried to apply as little pressure as possible to your wounded leg but it was inevitable. Halfway there you noticed that your leg was pouring blood down your leg. It was breaking the seal in your suit and leaving a trail behind you.

“Oxygen levels 53%.”

Almost there. You could do this.

The pain in your leg was unbearable. You felt dizzy from the blood loss and felt as if you would pass out but you knew you couldn’t risk it. So close, you made it to the airlock, depressurized and then made it safely back inside.

You ripped off your helmet and gulped in the air, falling back against the wall of the HAB for support. Medical attention - that’s what you needed. Thankfully, everyone had left in a hurry so Beck should have left his medical supplies behind. Taking a deep shuddering breath you willed yourself to move. Holding onto various pieces of furniture to guide you to where his station was. As quick as you could you gathered what you would need. All the equipment looking like medieval torture devices as you held them in shaky hands.

“Okay, okay, okay.” You breathed sharply and ripped out the metal. You screamed out in pain, nearly vomiting right there. There was no time to waste. You could feel the wound pulsing out blood. With little care for your suit, you shrugged out of it as fast as possible and chucked it to the floor. You hoisted yourself onto the med bed and pulled up your injured leg. The wound was gaping and you could practically see through the gap. At least you knew you hadn’t hit any major arteries because you would have been dead by now if you had.

You grabbed a belt and tied it above the wound to cut off the blood supply as much as you could. Now you could see the wound you wiped away what blood you could and grabbed some equipment to route around for any shrapnel still in your wound. You bit back cries as you hunted for any shrapnel. You grabbed hold of a small piece and pulled it out but it broke off inside the wound meaning you had to find the other half. You bit through your lip holding back screams as you went back into your wound to get the other half.

With all shrapnel removed you could finally begin to sew up the would. Except you only had staples. It wasn’t the best medical care and not nearly enough for how bad it was but it was all you had. If it got infected and you died, at least you’d tried.

You punched your wound closed on both side and wrapped it in a hefty amount of bandages. You released the belt from your leg and let out a sigh. What were you supposed to do now? The team were on their way back to Earth, NASA thought you were dead, Mark was dead.

Oh god, Mark was dead.

You’d have to find his body tomorrow and give him a proper burial even if it is on Mars. Before your hit you had wanted to find his body to bring back to be buried on earth but now it seemed neither of you would be granted that luxury.

There were plenty of rations left so you had some time to figure out how the hell you were going to survive here alone. Just as you began to relax you were woken by a sound you should definitely not be hearing ever again. The sound of the airlock.

The HAB wasn’t breached, if it was you would have imploded by now. No, this was far worse. Now was not the time you wanted to make the discovery that life was actually on Mars; that something was going to kill you for real and nobody would know the difference.

What you saw was more horrifying than you could have ever pictured.

Mark Watney.

You screamed bloody murder when you saw him, in turn, he screamed back.

“What are you doing here!” You both cried at each other.

“You’re supposed to be dead!” You yelled.

“You’re supposed to be on the Hermes!” He yelled back.

You shook your head. “I got hit just after you, the team thinks we’re dead,” you told him.

The team thinks that you’re dead. It sunk in properly that you wouldn’t ever speak to them again. You wouldn’t ever get to see Chris again or listen to his laugh. Even if you had watched him fall in love with Beth at least you would have been his friend. That wasn’t possible when you were stranded on Mars.

Mark, Mark was alive. Without words, you limped forward and pulled him into a hug still in his space suit. That was when you noticed the antenna sticking out of his side.

“Oh my god, Mark, we need to fix you up. Come over here.” You ordered him, leading him over to where you had fixed yourself up.

“Take off your suit,” you said and began to clean your drying blood off the instruments so you could use them on Mark.

“Getting me to strip already, didn’t think you’d want to repopulate so soon,” Mark joked. Wincing when he jostled the metal in his side.

You rolled your eyes with a smile. “Ha ha,” you said sarcastically, happy to have him back.

Mark laughed a little. “Nah, I’m joking. I know you’re saving yourself for Dr. Bossy Beck,” he teased.

You couldn’t help the blush that formed at his teasing. You were so glad that he wasn’t dead. He was someone you could live without, Mark was family.

“Shuddup, sit,” you directed. “This’ll hurt.” You warned and pulled out the antenna quickly. He yelled in pain and you apologised but he waved it off. Silently you began to treat his wound, removing the shrapnel from his wound and stapling his wound.

“You’re lucky you only got off with this,” you joked, holding up the antenna.

Mark furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. You grabbed the thick piece of metal from the side.

“This went all the way through my leg,” you explained.

Mark’s eyes went wide. “Holy shit, are you okay?”

“Yeah I’m fine,” you nodded. “We can’t contact NASA though, we got hit by the communication dish which also got snapped in half,” you told him.

He sighed and dropped back in defeat. “Well, what are we if not inventive?” He tried to lighten the situation, “We have time to work something out.”

“Unless you can build a rocket from scratch out of all the broken equipment we got outside I think we might just be stuck here.” You grimaced.

Mark bit his lip. “We’ll think of something,” he repeated. You didn’t disagree this time, too worried to think even more about your inevitable death.

“I’m going to turn in,” you said, “Rest up. We’ll have to see what we can fix tomorrow,” you told him to which he nodded in agreement.

“Goodnight, Y/N.”

“Goodnight, Mark.”


	3. Chapter 3

The crew had been aboard the Hermes for almost a day now. Nobody wanted to talk about the deaths of their crew members.

When it came to eating meals the chairs at the table were painfully empty and a heavy silence was constantly about the crew. Lewis put on a brave face. She blamed herself for leaving you both behind when it was her job to keep the crew safe. She’d let two members be killed on Mars and that was on her.

Beck felt even guiltier. On that last day he hadn’t had time to talk to you and now it seemed like that was time wasted. If he had known what was going to happen he would have never let you out of his sight. You had been behind him when they were leaving then you weren’t. It all happened so quickly he barely understood how everything could have gone so wrong.

Beth was quieter than usual. You and her had been close and you knew how to get her to come out of her shell and let loose.

Now you were gone.

She felt like she had nobody to turn to. Even Beck had been closed off and Beth didn’t think he had even been particularly close to either of you.

Truth was, Beck had been enamoured by you since he first met you. You had been so eager at training and had always been bright and sunny no matter how hard the task was you kept the team’s spirits up. You were an endless source of happy energy. As the doctor, he had been recruited for the mission fairly earlier and helped oversee who else would be selected as part of the team. You had been chosen second to last, only before Watney, and you had been an obvious choice. You were able to be humorous but also quiet and attentive when needed. You were the perfect slot.

Everyone on the team got on well with you and making friends wasn’t even an effort. When he first met you he had thought that you wouldn’t have time for someone as reserved as him seeing as you fit in so well with Martinez and later Watney who were arguably the loudest and most boisterous people he had ever met.

Yet still, you made quick friends with him. Unlike the others, you didn’t mind just sitting in a comfortable silence just getting on with work or during free time. You let him speak his thoughts aloud about his experiments or various medical things. Even if he knew you barely understood half of what he was saying you still listened. He was grateful for it; considering the others would laugh and tell him to shut up because he wasn’t making sense to them.

So, yeah, you fit in well. You were the final jigsaw piece to the team and became one of his closest friends. He had declared you dead, dead and gone and left to be buried over time on Mars with Mark.

Beck had no clue how the hell he was going to go on without you around to cheer him up. You had made this whole trip away from Earth bearable for him. With you and Mark gone he knew the morale would be almost completely gone for the rest of the trip. It was now up to him to make sure that he and none of the others fell into depression after this loss.

If they did it could cost the mission.


	4. Chapter 4

Rover 1 was out of commission which was just fucking great.

Thankfully, rover 2 was up and working and Mark was currently driving around trying to figure out just how far it would be able to travel without recharging. Moving was difficult with the wound in your leg but you and Mark were both half drugged with pain killers so it wasn’t as hard as it could have been. Thank god NASA sent out plenty of drugs and vitamin supplements before you had arrived or else you would have been screwed.

This morning you had taken inventory of everything you had and worked out a game plan.

“We’ve only been here 6 sols, and there’s enough to last the whole crew to sol 62. With the food that’s left it would last one of us to almost sol 400, but there’s two of us. So, it’ll only last to sol 200 unless we eat half rations at fewer intervals.” You had told Mark as you were coming out of the HAB’s kitchen.

“Ah, see,” Mark cried out with a smile, spinning in his chair away from the screen to face you. “We won’t die straight away. Didn’t I tell you Y/N would figure out how to stretch the food supplies?” he said to the screen.

You frowned a little, walking over. “Are you vlogging? What’s the point, it’ll never get back to NASA,” you asked, plonking down in the chair next to him.

Mark shrugged. “You never know, it could document our ascent into Mars Madness." He grinned, “Plus it’s a way to remember that we used to look attractive before we slowly wither away when we run out of food,” he said melodramatically.

You snorted and rolled your eyes. “Sorry, but who said you were attractive?” you asked with a shit-eating grin on your face. Mark shoved you on the shoulder playfully with a roll of his eyes.

“But seriously. If your calculations are correct we have at least 200 sols to figure out how to grow food on a planet where nothing grows,” he sobered.

You bit your lip, looking from Mark to the screen where your images were projected then back to him.

“You always say how you’re the botany king. Now’s your chance to prove that it’s actually a real science,” you teased. It was an ongoing joke amongst the crew that botany wasn’t a real science and Mark wasn’t needed on the team. Even though he was arguably one of the most important on the team considering their mission was to see if they could colonize Mars. i.e. grow food on it. i.e. botany.

Mark laughed, “Oh don’t worry, I will. Mars will come to fear my botany powers.”

So now here you were, moving as much stray debris away from the HAB if it wasn’t salvageable in case another storm hit. You didn’t exactly want lots of scraps of metal near your HAB in a storm so they could be chucked at and breach the HAB.

Whilst Mark was gone you were able to brush the sand off the solar panels, check around the HAB for breaches and have lots of time to think about how the hell you were going to survive. There were lots of supplements, enough to last a lifetime, but the two of you couldn’t survive on vitamins alone. You’d need more calories and, eventually, you would run out of food.

The next mission to Mars was in five years. So really you just had to make it that long and then hitch a ride back home with them. There were, of course, some technical difficulties: Ares IIII’s MAV would only have six seats for the six members of their crew and would thus leave no room for you and Mark. Not to mention it was on a completely different section of Mars. Further than the rover would be able to drive without recharging back at the HAB. God, it’s almost as if NASA didn’t plan on leaving two astronauts stranded alive on a planet for five years.

The communication dish was completely snapped in half and then each half was damaged some more. All in all, there was absolutely no hope in contacting NASA.

The HAB wasn’t meant to last long, so while Mark was still out you took it upon yourself to check all the equipment that would be keeping you alive was still in check. The airlocks were all fine. The machines that cleaned water and kept the HAB pressurized were still working. You made a note to do weekly checks in case anything happened.

You still had time to spare so you logged onto the HAB server and pulling up your own log and clicking record. “So Mark’s probably been over this but we did not die on Sol 6 after all but we were hit by debris. A chunk of metal went through my leg but I’m surprisingly mobile considering and walking doesn’t hurt that much. I’m assuming that’s to do with the amount of pain killers I’m on and the fact that Mars has a lower gravity than Earth so there’s less pressure on the wound.” You shrugged.

“Only rover 2 is working but we’ve figured out we need to be at the Ares IIII landing site in 5 year.” You sighed, then shrugged. “Even if we don’t make it, how many people can say they lived and died on Mars? Not many,” you finger gunned at the camera. “I still have my personal items, got my laptop with a bunch of crap downloaded on it to keep me from going stir crazy,” you managed a weak chuckle.

“Really I’m just worried about the team. I’m not bothered about me. I always had a feeling I’d die young, but the team…I hope they made it to the Hermes okay. That it went as it should and they’re hurtling their way back to Earth to live long happy lives. If they’re happy I can live with that. I’ll miss them like hell, especially Beck, but at least they won’t be stuck here,” you nodded to yourself. It was true, you knew the team would be feeling like shit but at least they had the chance to live now.

You heard the rumble of the rover outside the HAB.

“Marks back, gotta go,” you winked at the camera and logged off. The airlock pressurized and a few minutes later Mark came strolling through the HAB.

“Rover conked out at 32 kilometers,” he sighed. “We could carry round the battery of the first rover and then change it, that’ll only get us to about 64 kilometers,” he said and sat in the chair opposite you.

You looked over at the map of Mars on the wall, searching the black and white diagram for any answers. Nada. Fortunately for you, you were stuck on Mars with an engineering botanist. “The RTG,” Mark said suddenly.

“What?”

He stood up and pointed to the map. “There. It’s the radioactive isotope, if we use that to heat the rover we’ll have more power left to travel, then we hook up solar panels for charging.”

You nodded, “Nice thinking Watney. We’ll start rigging that all up tomorrow, have you and your botany powers saved us yet?” you teased.

Mark shook his head, “Not yet.”

“Mars trembles in fear,” you joked.

Mark laughed. “C’mon, let’s make dinner,” he got up and wandered into the kitchen. You could hear him pulling out drawers, then you heard a triumphant yell.

You shot up and rushed to the kitchen. “Potatoes? Never knew you were such a fan,” you smiled, leaning against the counter.

“No, Y/N, don’t you see? Potatoes!” Mark grinned madly, rolling his eyes when you stared blankly at him. “We can cut them up and plant them and they’ll grow into more potatoes.”

You perked up, “We can cultivate Mars. Wait, but how will they grow?”

“We turn the common area into a greenhouse, dig up dirt and bring it in, figure out how to get water and bam! Potato farm,” he grinned.

You smiled brightly back at him, launching at him and pulling him into a hug. “Mark you’re a genius. We aren’t gonna die on Mars!” you cried happily as Mark picked you up and spun you round.

“Botany, am I right?” he held out his fist for you to bump, you laughed and bumped his fist. Maybe you weren’t doomed after all, maybe in a few years you would be able to travel back to Earth and see Beck and your family again.


	5. Chapter 5

Beth Johanssen spent an exceptional amount of time in the gym since they left Mars. You had been so close that the only way to forget that she had left you and Mark behind was to work her body until her legs felt like jelly.

“Keep that up and you might get more muscles than when we left.” Beck’s voice startled her.

She looked behind her to see him leaning against the wall at the entrance to the gym. She turned back around and kept running but slowed it down to a lower speed.

“It helps," was all she said.

Beck walked over, his jaw set tight. “I know,” he said quietly. He walked past her and stared out the windows and into the stars. He seemed to spend a lot of time doing that, Beth noted. As if, if he looked hard enough you and Mark would magically appear in a rocket and yell at them for leaving them behind. God he wished that was possible, even if you hated him forever at least you would be alive.

The Hermes sped further and further away and with each passing mile all he could think about was how he had left your body on Mars; left to be cold and buried forever. He should have done something. He should have gone out and kept looking for you. He should have agreed with you and Watney and convinced the others to wait the storm out. It was his fault.

“It’s not your fault,” Beth said.

Beck could see her reflection in the window come up behind him. Beth knew what he was thinking because she was thinking it too. After you, Beth was his best friend on the crew. He hadn’t really talked to her since the incident because he knew if he started talking as if nothing had happened he would break down. So he didn’t talk to anyone.

“We couldn’t have stopped it from happening.” She said quietly, placing a hand on his arm.

“We still left them there.”

Beth bit her lip, she couldn’t argue with that. “They wouldn’t have wanted us to stay, they’d want us to be safe up here,” she reasoned, though she didn’t believe it herself.

—-

“I can’t believe those dicks left us stranded here,” you groaned.

Mark had thankfully found a way to grow potatoes. After spending an entire day practically breaking your back lugging dirt into the HAB you then had to mix up everyone’s shit for bacteria for the potatoes to grow in. It reeked and it took everything you had to not throw up.

Mark chuckled from beside you as he spooned the shit-mix into the ground, though he looked a little green himself. “Why so? Is it because of Lewis’ disco music? The lack of variety in our finest freeze dried food? The fact that we have to handle everyone’s crap?” he listed.

“Yes, yes and yes,” you grumbled, planting potatoes on the adjacent row. You hoped to god that this was all worth it and the potatoes actually did grow, otherwise this whole day would have been pointless. It took about another hour or so to fill up all the space in your make-shift farm and you still had a few bits of potatoes and shit-mix left. You scrunched your nose as you eyed the mix, even with nose plugs you could smell it and taste it in the air. “We should turn rover 1 into a miniature farm with the leftovers,” you called over to Mark.

Mark nodded, “Good idea,” he agreed.

You would have to bring the rover inside the HAB considering it didn’t have an airlock so every time you opened the door the plants would be exposed to the Martian atmosphere and die. So you had to bring it inside the HAB so that didn’t happen, which meant you had to dismantle it.

You and Mark put on your space suits and went outside, first you worked on the inside to take out the seats and control panel to clear the floor for your mini farm. Then you rolled it over to the airlock, took off the wheels then had to carry it inside the HAB yourselves.

The both of you decided to put it just outside the larger farm and you would have to water it manually each day compared to the automatic water making system you would have to set up pretty soon if you wanted the potatoes to survive. You used up the rest of the potatoes and finally you could just relax and eat some food. All the work had strained the wound on your leg and even Mark had popped a staple in his side. Thankfully you hadn’t, but your leg was aching and you had to lie down.

Your laptop had all the episodes of your favourite show downloaded. You lay on your bed watching the episodes and you could hear Mark making a log in the background. In this moment you could pretend that everything was normal, that the crew were all still here and doing their thing. That that storm had never hit and everyone was okay. In truth you were glad the crew were safe on the Hermes, you would never wish for any of them to be trapped down here with you and Mark.

It would have been too late to stop the MAV tipping and you were glad the others had managed to escape safely - even if it meant leaving you behind. It was the right call to make. Still, you missed them, a ten-month journey here and years of training had brought you all so close. They were your family through and through.

Mark finished his vlog and flopped down on the bed next to you silently. You lay your head on his shoulder taking comfort in the fact that you weren’t completely alone down here. If you were you had no idea how you would cope. You never would have thought to grow potatoes so you knew you would have died after a while anyway.

“I miss Beck,” you said, your voice quiet. Mark and Martinez were like your brothers but Beck was so much more to you. His presence had always calmed you down and made you feel safe. He didn’t tease you like the others and you could have long conversations about work and your lives, you couldn’t help but miss him the most.

“I know,” Mark replied quietly, comfortingly.

He didn’t tease you this time, he knew how close you and Beck were and how lost you must be feeling without him. Even he missed the doctor the most out of the rest of the crew. Chris always made people feel safe and despite being one of the quieter ones he didn’t hesitate to crack an unexpected joke which had the whole team in laughter. You were usually bubbly and fun, Mark hated seeing you so down- not that he could blame you, stuck on Mars was hardly an ideal situation. Mark hoped the two of you would somehow get off this godforsaken planet, maybe then you would be happy again.


	6. Chapter 6

You and Mark had figured out to use the leftover hydrazine to make enough water for the potatoes. Except despite being two NASA employed scientists with high intellect both of you had forgot to account for the added oxygen you breathed out. Which of course messed with the calculations and ended up exploding on you.

The force of the blow flung you back and crashing into Mark. Your ears were ringing loudly and you were fairly sure a staple had popped in your leg. When your senses came back you realised you should probably roll off Mark. You heard him groan as he struggled to stand up. Mark offered you a hand which you took gratefully, hissing in pain when you stood up and put pressure on your leg.

“Well, that went well.” You said sarcastically as Mark helped you out and into the chair next to his at the computer.

He pulled up the camera to film a log and you watched him make it, only half hearing what he was saying behind the ringing in your own ears.

After a short while you regained your senses and looked down to see you had in fact popped a staple and had bled through your bandages. You rolled your eyes in annoyance and hobbled over to redress your wound. Whilst you were out of action Mark put on his spacesuit and fixed the whole water situation now that he had accounted for the whole breathing out oxygen problem.

Later on you walked in to check on the potatoes, running your fingers over the water that had collected on the clear tarp. The water was cool to your touch and filled you with a sense of hope that maybe, just maybe, you had a chance to survive here.

—

It was time to start thinking ahead.

It had been several sols since you planted the potatoes and Mark was sure that they were growing nicely. But you couldn’t live here forever. You had to think about how in the hell you were going to make it to the Schiaparelli crater for the next Ares mission.

The RTG would be used to power the rover for the long journey but you still needed to go get it. The two of you decided that you would be the one to go get it. With the wound in your leg you couldn’t do much work so it made sense to have you driving a rover all day compared to staying at the HAB and constantly on your feet doing equipment checks.

You were all set to leave, you and Mark were inside the HAB before you left.

“Be safe,” Mark said. “Make sure you fully charge it using the solar panels. Do you have enough food with you?” he asked.

“Yes, I’ll be fine,” you rolled your eyes fondly at his mother henning. “I won’t be gone all that long anyway. Just a few days, calm yourself.”

Mark sighed, “Okay, but if anything happens–”

“Then I can’t do anything,” you cut him off. “But that won’t happen, okay? The rover survived that storm she can survive anything, I’ll be alright,” you assured him.

He nodded, relenting. “Fine,” he grumbled and pulled you into a tight hug. He couldn’t help but worry, what if something bad did happen out there? He wouldn’t be able to stop it, help you or even know it had happened. It would kill him if he lost you now.

You hugged him back, nervous yourself but you knew you had to go get the RTG or else you would never get off this planet. “Goodbye, Mark,” you pulled away, quickly putting on your spacesuit and leaving the HAB with a final wave.

Rover 2 was all set up with the solar panels on the back for when you would need to take them off and recharge it. You got in and started up the rover and began your journey. The RTG wasn’t incredibly far from the HAB but with the limited distance the rover could travel it would take a few days to reach it. As you drove further and further and the HAB went out of sight you felt a pit in your stomach as you thought about how alone you were up here. The silence was maddening and the emptiness of the vast sand was terrifying.

To fill the time you opened up a log in the rover and looked down at the small camera.

“I’m on my way to go get the RTG. Mark’s still at the HAB growing potatoes and doing equipment checks which means I’m all alone out here. You can’t see it but this planet is so empty. I keep thinking that I’m seeing movements out of the corner of my eyes, which is to say mildly terrifying. Thus far we haven’t found life on Mars and while that discovery would be amazing I don’t exactly want to be the one discovering it in the dead of night, y’know?”

You bit your lip as you drove further. “I’m probably making it up in my mind though, because everything here is just a waste land. It happened on earth too, seeing shadows where there was no one and I don’t believe in ghosts, so I am a firm believer it’s just my mind going a little crazy. Mars Madness, Mark would say. Don’t tell him that I used that phrase though,” you chuckled a little to yourself.

You shivered a little as you began to realise just how cold it was. “Good thing about Mars though is the sunsets and sunrises. Because of the atmosphere and dust they’re blue,” you smiled, “Which is really beautiful and a perk of this planet if I do say so myself. When the rest of the team were here we weren’t out at night because we were all inside doing work. I don’t think they got to see how beautiful it was,” you said sadly. “I mean, me and Mark had loads of time on our hands now. Yesterday we just sat outside and watched the sun go down, it was breath taking. I think Beck would have loved it, it’s a shame he didn’t get to see it before he left.”

It got too cold for you to control the rover properly as your fingers had frozen so you turned it off. “My issue now is that the heating uses up a lot of the battery, battery that I need to make the trip. But if I don’t put on the heating, I’m gonna freeze to death,” you breathed on your hands trying to warm them up. “Fuck it,” you breathed, leaning forward to flip the switch to put the heating on. Instantly you felt the warm air hitting your face and heating up the small compartment. You got your fingers warmed then began driving again.

“This is gonna be a long journey,” you groaned and shut off the camera.

—

Mindy Park had been enjoying the quiet night at the office. Working late shifts meant that there was barely anyone else around to distract her and she could get her work done in peace. This was disrupted of course when she found movement around the Ares III base when there absolutely shouldn’t be.

She had contacted Vincent Kapoor who brought Teddy Sanders and Annie Montrose to look at the satellite images. “One of them is still alive,” Kapoor spoke in the silence.

“Nonsense,” Sanders shook his head in disbelief, “There has to be another explanation. Could the wind do this?”

“It could clear the solar panels but look, the rovers moved and all this stray debris has been moved as well. The wind couldn’t do that, it was a person.”

“My god we left them there,” Annie breathed out.

“Or one of them,” Kapoor pointed out, “We have no idea if they both managed to survive. It could be one of them alive up there with the dead body of their crew mate.”

All of them fell silent, “Is there any way of finding out?” Sanders asked.

“We just have to keep watching and hope for the best,” Kapoor sighed.

“Hope for the best!” Sanders exclaimed, “These pictures have to be released to the public, what are they going to say about us. ‘NASA leaves astronauts for dead on inhabitable planet’? We’ll never get any more funding!”

Kapoor scoffed, “Funding? That’s all you care about? They think we left them all alone up there, what does that do to a person.”


	7. Chapter 7

The potatoes were growing great; when you had first seen the small green sprout you had almost cried with joy. You had practically jumped on Mark you hugged him so hard.

“We did it! Mark, I take everything back- you are actually the botany king,” you exclaimed with a big happy grin. Mark mirrored you and you high fived each other.

You couldn’t believe that you had made it so far. When you had finally reached the RTG you were uncertain as to whether digging up the big box of plutonium was the right way to go. The skull on the flag did have the desired off-putting effect, particularly now considering it was a matter of life and death.

Suffice to say you had dug it up and carefully put it behind you in the rover. You weren’t worried about radiation poisoning as you were more likely to get that or cancer from just being out in the Martian atmosphere. What you were worried about was that it would accidentally explode and kill you, which is why every time the rover bumped and jostled going over a rock your heart stopped beating for a second.

The HAB had become home to you. You’d already spent a few months there and you had settled into a routine with Mark. When you saw the outline in the horizon you were filled with joy, you had done it, you made it and you and Mark could keep surviving.

Mark had taken good care of things whilst you were gone - keeping the potatoes in what was left of Rover 1 watered and making sure all equipment was in check. Even outside the HAB the larger pieces of debris that you couldn’t move yourself had all been cleared away. You were glad about this but you hoped Mark hadn’t strained himself too much while you were away when you realised that he had been working so much to stay occupied without you around.

It was slow going with barely anything to do and any entertainment you brought kind of got repetitive since you had only planned to be there a month. You had come to acquire a taste for Commander Lewis’ disco music and sometimes you even heard Mark humming along even though he would deny it if asked.

The potatoes grew along with your hope. Even though rations were small and you knew you were losing weight, you and Mark still managed to have a relatively good time. The two of you had finished your own original experiments and then some but then you figured you might as well take over the rest of the crews unfinished experiments.

Mark was sorting through Lewis’ and Vogel’s samples while you had to figure out what the hell Chris was meant to be doing. “Hey Mark, you wouldn’t happen to know what chemolithotrophic detection is?” you asked as you looked down through the microscope.

You heard Mark chuckle. “Nope,” he popped the ‘p’. “Any idea what Martinez actually does?” he asked to which you shook your head.

“Damn, see Martinez. Neither of us know why we actually brought you,” Mark said to the camera and you giggled from your space on the other side of the lab. The two of you had taken to vlogging most of the stuff you do to keep track of everything and to fill the silent lulls so you didn’t go mad.

It was amusing listening to Mark go on to the crew as if they were there whilst you worked. You had been stranded for something like 150 days by now. Mark kept score somewhere but you didn’t like to look at the exact amount knowing that with each passing sol the crew became further and further out of reach. Doing Beck’s work often made you think back to when you would stay in Chris’ lab at the end of the day listening to him try to explain what he was doing.

* * *

_“So, Beckster, what are you going to be doing when we get to Mars?” you asked when you only had a month left of the journey. You were laying back on the med bay and tossing a small rubber ball up and down and catching it to keep you busy whilst Chris tried to finish of his work._

_“Don’t call me ‘Beckster’,” Chris said but his lips were quirked into a smile. “And I’ll be doing experiments on chemolithotrophic detection,” he told you._

_You looked over at him with a scrunched nose, “Chemolitho-what?”_

_Chris chuckled, “Chemolithotrophic detection,” he repeated.“It’s basically deriving energy from the oxidation of reduced inorganic compounds like um, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen on it’s own, ferrous iron and some other I can’t think of off the top of my head,” he explained._

_“Sounds fun,” you said dryly causing him to laugh._

_“Oh, it is,” Beck chuckled, you tuned to face him with a smile. He was still at the counter going through some files but he would be finishing soon, even though you joked about his work you did enjoy listening to him talk and even if you didn’t understand half of it and forgot how it worked within an hour you felt like you were learning when you let him ramble on about work._

_“What are you doing anyway?” He asked, glancing up at you._

_“Oh just lying here, waiting for a bossy doctor to come eat dinner with me whilst I tragically wither away from starvation,” you sighed melodramatically, placing a hand to your forehead._

_Chris laughed, “I meant when we get to Mars. And shush, I’m almost finished.”_

_You chuckled and pushed yourself up so you were sitting with your legs dangling off the med bed. “Just some analysis of rocks to see if I can find evidence of past water or life on the planet. I’ll have to dig into the ground quite a bit to get samples from rocks and crap that will have been covered by dust but who knows,” you shrugged.“Maybe if I dig deep enough I’ll discover a whole flourishing world beneath the surface of Mars,” you grinned._

_“Yeah, maybe Y/N,” Chris rolled his eyes fondly._

_“Are you ready yet?” you asked again._

_“Yes, yes, I’m ready, let’s go,” Chris closed his files and you jumped off the bed and practically skipped over to him._

_“Great,” you said happily and looped your arm through his, “I’m starved.”_

* * *

You smiled sadly at the memory, though listening to Beck talk for practically hours on end about everything he was going to be doing on Mars did give you a certain advantage into completing his experiments. Not much, but some.

Mark was next to you, speaking to the camera to your left.

“Hey Johanssen, I know you don’t like it when I touch the chem cam. But I’m touching it… a lot,” you glanced over to see he was stroking the chem cam whilst making direct eye contact with the camera.

“You keep that up Beth might just turn the Hermes around herself to stop you,” you joked. It was kind of funny how much Johanssen hated Mark touching her things, which if you were honest you could understand. On the first day you had been unpacking all the equipment and Mark had almost dropped Johanssen’s chem cam. So, it was normal for her to get a little bit antsy when Mark went near the expensive breakable equipment.

The days were beginning to draw on. Your potatoes were almost ready for harvesting Mark told you and you couldn’t wait to eat something that had been freeze-dried then rehydrated. You had reservations that they would be grown out of literal human waste, what with the bacteria that would infect the potatoes. Would it affect the taste?

Mark assured you that the effect on taste would be minimal in that the quality would just be lower than one’s home grown on earth. For the bacteria- yes they would get pathogens but everyone else’s waste had been freeze dried, killing the bacteria. The only pathogens in there are ones you and Mark already have, and after spending so much time living in close quarters you were basically immune to each other’s pathogens by now anyway.

But potatoes could only last you so long - Mark decided that it was worth a shot to go retrieve Pathfinder and hope for the best. He was an engineer after all and you were pretty tech savvy, the two of you should be able to get it working again.

So this time Mark went off. Pathfinder was much further than the RTG had been so Mark would be away for close to a month whilst you took care of the harvest back at the HAB. The first few days were endlessly quiet, it was as if your brain had forgotten that Mark had survived at all. The loneliness was a lot to take on all at once, sometimes you could swear that you heard the voices of the crew and laughter distantly only to realise they were millions of miles away.

* * *

Time dragged on and soon you had to harvest the potatoes; you used a trowel to dig them out so as not to disturb the roots. You collected all the medium and small ones for your food source then kept the larger ones for replanting which would turn out a better yield. The ones you planted in Rover 1 had turned out great as well, all of them were medium sized or larger. You put the bucket of potatoes to eat in the kitchen then chopped up the large ones and replanted them after you had fertilised the soil.

You didn’t have as many potatoes to replant as the first time but you decided to spread them out as much as possible to give them a better chance at growing larger. You were happy with your harvest, proud that it had all worked out.

That evening you loaded up a log as you ate dinner. “Now, really I should wait another week or two till Mark gets back. But I am sick of freeze-dried food,” you said and bit into a potato. “My god real food is so good,” you groaned, even though the taste was probably bad you couldn’t tell since you hadn’t had any proper food in well over a year.

“Well, we cultivated Mars. That’s certainly something to put on the resume,” you chuckled to yourself. If someone had told you when you first joined NASA that in a few years you would be the first to grow food on Mars with your best friend you would have laughed at them, now look at you.

* * *

When Mark got back you had never felt so relieved. In the last few days you had been nervous that he may not have made it there and he had died for real this time. Now he was back you forgot how much you missed him being gone so you didn’t have to listen to him complain about disco music.

“Shut up, Watney. If you wanted better music you should have brought your own,” you rolled your eyes at him from across the dinner table.

“But it doesn’t even make sense. Even I couldn’t bare to only have my favourite genre of music, what was Lewis thinking? Purely disco, did she not think that she herself would get tired of the same old songs?”

You gave him a look and he threw his hands up in exasperation, then eyed you.

“What?”

“Don’t tell me like disco music,” Mark sounded betrayed.

Now it was your turn to be exasperated, “I tolerate it.”

* * *

The next day you and Mark were up nice and early to see if you could fix pathfinder. It took a lot of messing with wires and solar heating for it to power up. You and Mark had been outside all day, you hadn’t anticipated that it would take so long and now you were leaning against Mark’s legs whilst you sat on the floor in front of him whilst he used a rock as a seat.

“Maybe it just won’t work,” you said, squinting at the pathfinder in the light. Just then you heard it whir to life and the camera spun around, you and Mark jumped up at the sight. “It worked,” you breathed, you could barely process it- you had contact with NASA.

“We need signs,” Mark said and rushed off to the HAB. You followed after him quickly and into the kitchen where he began to pull off lids from various boxes. You caught on to what he was doing and began collecting poles to stick them too.

You got outside and placed them a fair distance from each other. _Are you receiving us? Yes/No_

There was a few minutes delay during which your stomach filled with butterflies and your fingers tingled with nerves. Slowly, the camera pointed to the sign which read _Yes_.

You let out a scream of excitement and so did Mark who lifted you into an unexpected hug and spun you around. The two of you laughed happily in shock, NASA knew you were here, you could contact them, they could speak to you.

Over the next day, you and Mark figured out a hexadecimal system for more complex conversations with NASA. Thankfully, Beth had kept loads of sheets on different codes. She also had a laptop with episodes of Happy Days which was a welcome entertainment. Neither of you could be bothered to go out at night so you decided to set it up in the morning. In the meantime, you were going through everyone’s boxes of personal items, particularly Beck’s. He mainly had pictures of the crew and a laptop which was password-protected so you couldn’t get in. Most importantly he had a jumper in there which you instantly claimed as yours, it was warm and still smelled like him - something you hadn’t realised you missed just as much as you did.

With the system all set up you and Mark were able to communicate back and forth with NASA.

_Are u both ok_

_Yes, got injured on sol 6 but made it_

_How alive_

_We grew potatoes_

And so on and so forth. NASA gave you a code to program into the rovers communication system to broadcast on the same frequency as pathfinder so you would actually be able to type out conversations.

You and Mark were crammed into the small space the rover provided, you were leaning over the chair from behind him next to the RTG and reading over his shoulder as he typed. Mostly they were asking how the two of you were, Mark explained about your injuries from sol 6 but how his side and your leg had mostly healed up now. He then told NASA about how you had grown potatoes and then it came down to the big question which had you leaning forward.

_What did the team say when you told them we were alive?_

That was really all you wanted to know, what did the team say. Did they feel guilty? Probably. But did they realise it was all that they could do? You hoped so. You hoped they hadn’t taken your death too hard only to find out they had left you, you hoped that they were managing just fine without you.

No reply came through and you bounced your leg, “Ask what’s happening,” you urged Mark.

_Are you receiving?_

The next few minutes were tense as you waited for a reply to come through.

_Yes. The crew doesn’t know that you are alive, it’s best that they concentrate on the mission._

What. The. Fuck

You and Mark exploded into anger.

“What the fuck!” you yelled. You saw red, “How could they not tell our fucking crew that we were alive!” you screamed as Mark continued to swear loudly beside you.

Mark surged forward and typed what you were thinking aggressively at the keyboard, you nodded along behind him as you read what he had said which ended with a lovely ‘thanks a fucking lot, NASA, suck my dick.’

You rolled your eyes as a message came back to watch your language, as if that would stop you. You were more pissed than you could ever remember being. Who the hell gave them the right to not tell the crew that you weren’t dead? As if they wouldn’t be distracted enough by the thought you were dead, when were they going to tell them, if ever? When they got back to earth? You huffed angrily in the back of the rover, it was probably best that you weren’t the one at the keyboard because you knew if you had, NASA would have had no idea what had hit them.


	8. Chapter 8

NASA had been working day and night to make a shuttle to deliver supplies to you and Mark. Now that communication had been established with Earth and you guys, NASA had been trying to micromanage everything you guys did. They told you how to grow your potatoes and what rations to eat; tensions had still been high between you and NASA since you found out they hadn’t told the crew you were alive.

It had been over a month and most messages from you and Mark proceeded to tell NASA to go fuck themselves. Of course, they had told you to stop swearing considering it was all being broadcast around the world but if you were honest that just amused you even more. You weren’t there for PR, you figured after NASA left you guys on Mars you were well within your rights to express your true thoughts.

Mark came back from an EVA to tell you that the shuttle was almost ready and they predicted it would get to you at a sol in the 800’s. You grimaced at that you were already on half rations and to stretch food that long you would have to cut them down even more, but it was your only option for survival. Of course, life just had to screw you over, or maybe it was just NASA again, because they had skipped inspections the shuttle had exploded before it even left Earth’s atmosphere. So now your future here looked a little bleak. At least you had your potatoes. They had been planted for over 50 sols and would only need another half a month or so before they were ready to be harvested again.

Maybe it wasn’t the best to be living on a potato-based diet for several years and you had really begun to hate them. The same thing day in and day out started to wear on you but you struggled through it. Most of yours and Mark’s vlogs consisted of complaining about Mars, NASA or potatoes. You told yourself that it would all be okay because if you pushed through it then you would be able to go home.

* * *

The Hermes was quiet, everyone was gathered around the common room not talking. The past four months since they left Mars had been hell. Even Martinez, who had always been the joker, was stoic and engrossed in his work.

The data dump was coming through, it was a perk when videos of their families came through but it didn’t lift morale as much as it should have done. You and Watney had been everyone’s favourites and to lose you both had changed everyone.

“Data dump’s complete. There’s one for the whole crew,” Beth said softly, the crew slowly made their way over and gathered in front of the screen and waited for the video to load up.

They were a little confused to see their flight director but figured it was just a routine message, oh how wrong they were.

“There’s no easy way to say this,” Henderson started, “But Mark Watney and Y/N Y/L/N are alive. They are still on Mars and we’ve known for two months now but I was given orders not to tell you so you could focus on your mission. We have contact with them and they stress that it wasn’t your fault and they don’t blame you, every time you come up that’s what they say. Um, there isn’t anything you can do but we are planning a way to save them. That’s all,” the message shut up and the crew were silent.

Beck’s heart dropped, he felt like he couldn’t breathe. He had left you there - he had declared you dead and left you on Mars. You were his best friend, how could he do that to you? You probably hated him, he thought, he would deserve it for what he did to you.

“I left them there,” Lewis spoke with guilt in her voice. She was the commander and she had let you down, both of you had been alive and she had left both of you stranded. She wasn’t stupid she knew that there weren’t enough rations to sustain two of you on Mars for another rescue mission, honestly she was surprised that the two of you had managed to survive this long.

“No,” Beck shook his head, “We all did,” he swallowed.

“You were all following orders, I gave them.”

“It was me who told you they were dead,” Beck forced out, there was no point denying it. He knew that if he hadn’t said they were dead Lewis would have kept looking for them, it was him who stopped her from doing that.

Wordlessly Beck turned and left the common room and headed to his quarters, tears fell down his face as he held back sobs till he reached his room. It was all his fault, you had done everything for the crew and him. You had been there when he was feeling down and you were able to make him forget about the stress of training and anything else that was wrong and he had betrayed you. He slid down the side of the wall, tucked his legs to his chest and buried his face in his arms.

He heard someone come in and tried to quieten his cries. The person sat down next to him and he glanced over and saw that it was Beth. He was glad it was her and not someone else, he knew that she wouldn’t tell anyone that he had been crying.

“It’s not your fault,” she said.

“Y/N was my best friend, it was me who..” he couldn’t finish the sentence but Beth knew what he was getting at.

“You made the right call,” Beth insisted. “If you hadn’t we would have lost Lewis as well.” Beth knew how hard your death had hit Chris and she knew he must be feeling like utter shit now that he knew that he had left you on another planet. He had fared the worst out of everyone and Beth knew it was because he had loved you, more than he thought or was willing to admit to himself. She hoped, for both your sakes, that you made it back alive.


	9. Chapter 9

You had harvested the second batch of potatoes and the third were well on their way; the farm had worked better than you had ever expected. You had thought that it would turn out small potatoes but it turns out that fertilised Martian dirt is great for growing potatoes, size wise, not taste.

Mark had just gone out to do an EVA when you realised he had left some equipment by the airlock. With a sigh, you put on your own suit ready to go out and give it to him. Just as you clicked your helmet into place you were suddenly sucked and jolted away from the HAB.

Your mind went fuzzy as you were thrown harshly into the ground a distance away from the HAB but you realised that the HAB had breached for some reason. A few meters away from you the airlock rolled over until it came to a stop. A loud noise was overpowering your senses and you realised that your helmet had a large crack from where it had hit a rock.

The levels of oxygen were rapidly going down, your suit did it’s best to save you by filling up with pure oxygen but you needed nitrogen and the natural atmosphere was full of carbon dioxide which was infiltrating your suit. Frantically you patted your side looking for the duct tape you usually carried and you paused when you felt nothing. You had given it to Mark that morning. You struggled to breathe, your eyes filled with tears and you couldn’t move. The air was cold on your face but you didn’t register it as your vision clouded over and your world went black.

—

Mark’s helmet cracked in the explosion; he struggled to get the tape over the cracks in his suit but when he did he took a welcome deep breath. Then he began to panic even more- if he was in the airlock, and the airlock wasn’t attached to the HAB then the HAB was breached. And you were in the HAB.

He hadn’t moved so fast in his life. He got out of the airlock as fast as he could, looking in despair at the frozen farm but that wasn’t what he was looking for. He began to run in the direction of the HAB when he tripped over something large.

You.

For a fleeting moment he thought you were fine, you had a space suit on, but then he saw that your face was blue and the hole in the side of your helmet.

“No,” he breathed, landing on his knees with a thud.

—

Back on Earth, Rich Purnell was hyped up on coffee and typing frantically at his computer.

The world was devastated by the failed launch of supplies - the Chinese had offered their shuttle to help rescue you and Watney but even then everyone at NASA knew it may not get there in time. But he knew just how to save you.

When the calculations checked out he made flight plans to go straight to NASA. He explained to Sanders, who he did not realise was the head of NASA, that if they began to accelerate the Hermes instantly instead of decelerate and launch the supplies to be collected by the Ares crew. Who would then use a gravity assist to send them back to Mars, you and Watney could use the Ares IIII MAV to get up to the Hermes.

Henderson and Kapoor pushed for them to accept Rich’s ‘Elrond’ plan but ultimately Sanders overruled it by saying it would risk all of the crew’s lives. He would rather the two of you died than the whole crew, they had a chance to bring five astronauts home.

—

Mark had taped the hole shut and then covered it in more tape than necessary just to make sure. He dragged your body over to Rover 2 and got you both crammed in the space. When it had pressurised he tore of your helmet, your face was cold to the touch. Your lips were blue and icicles had formed at the tips of your eyelashes and on your eyebrows.

“No, no, no,” Mark cried, his eyes filling with tears. He couldn’t lose you, not after you had made it this far, he wouldn’t be able to live on without you. What would he tell everyone? What would he tell Beck? Oh god, he couldn’t do this.

With shaky fingers he reached out and pressed them against your neck. More hot tears fell down his face as he waited and waited for a pulse, he pressed harder. Desperate.

There it was.

Faint, yes, but there. Mark let out a sob of relief and pulled your body to his tightly. “I’m so sorry,” he cried, “It’s my fault.” He swallowed hard and turned the heating in the rover up to full, he hoped that with that plus the RTG you would heat up soon enough. He shucked off his spacesuit as much as he could then did the same for you.

He pulled you to him to share body heat. Your body was limp and flopped against him heavily, your face tucked securely in between his shoulder and neck. Mark rubbed his hands up and down your arms trying everything he could to warm you up. Every now and then he would feel a tiny tickle on his neck that let him know that you were still breathing. Still alive.

You were close to death and it was his fault, he was the engineer and he hadn’t noticed that the airlock was tearing after continued use. Everything had been going so well, he hadn’t checked the airlock this week even though he should have and now look where it landed you.

Your breaths became more frequent but not enough for Mark’s liking, he looked down and saw that your skin was no longer as blue but you were still too pale. He shifted forward, keeping you against him and typed out a message to NASA.

_Urgent. Airlock exploded. Y/L/N exposed to atmosphere, alive but critical. What do I do._

The time delay meant that he wouldn’t get an answer for another couple of minutes, during that time he did his best to keep you warm and held you close. He focussed on the feeling of you breathing against his neck to assure himself that you were still alive.

_Warm Y/L/N slowly, too much heat too quickly will result in death. When awake give warm food/drink._

Mark rolled his eyes, warm food or drink? Where was he going to get that if the HAB was breached? Still, he looked around the back of the rover and saw there were a few blankets and jumpers left there from when you had made trips to get the RTG and Pathfinder. Beck’s jumper was in here, he reached back for it and moved you away from him so he could put your arms through and put the jumper on you.

He swallowed trying to ignore the dead weight of you, at least you were here. He pulled you back to him and then draped the blankets over the two of you and tucking them close to your body. NASA kept asking for status reports on you but Mark didn’t respond, he wasn’t going to move away from you to type out a message. He had to keep you warm. Sure, everyone down on Earth would be freaked and stressed but not nearly as much as he was.

For the next few hours he refused to sleep, he had to take care of you. After two hours he felt your breathing slowly deepen and you weren’t cold to the touch anymore. Still, you didn’t wake up and your pulse was slow, though faster than it was when he first found you.

The sun came up and Mark couldn’t find it in him to marvel at the blue sunrise like the two of you used to. It was this planet and it’s stupid carbon-filled atmosphere that had caused you to almost die, in that moment he resented the cold blue that filled the sky.

“M-Mark?” you awoke dazed, your voice hoarse and you felt like jelly. Mark was instantly alert pulling back enough to look down at you as you blinked open your eyes.

“Y/N?” he whispered urgently.

“Wha-?” you tried to speak but you couldn’t, your throat was too dry and scratchy.

Mark shushed you gently, his eyes brimming with tears. You had pulled through, you were awake. “The airlock exploded and the HAB breached,” he explained quietly, “You were exposed and you probably have severe hypothermia.”

You nodded a little, burrowing into the heat of Mark. Even though you had a jumper, three blankets, an RTG and the rover’s heating on you still felt cold. “Oh,” you breathed, closing your eyes then snapping them open again, “The farm?”

Mark grimaced, “Died when the HAB breached.”

You were still out of it but you knew that was bad, no more potatoes meant no more food past the ones you already had. Though you had managed to get two harvests out of it, you knew things had been looking too good. “We still have the mini farm in rover 1,” you croaked.

Mark quirked a smile, “That’s true.”

“Told you it would be a good idea,” you forced out, giving a small smug smile.

You felt Mark chuckle, “Yes, you did.”

“I’m ‘sleep,” you yawned, snuggling into Mark.

“Okay,” Mark nodded, you were alive and you were talking. That was all he could wish for. You had woken up, everything would be fine, he wouldn’t let anything else go wrong again lest you be at the brunt of another one of his screw ups.


	10. Chapter 10

You and Mark spent another day just in the rover - you had some rations in there already to tide you over until you were able to move properly on your own. When you could you put your space suit back on half of it was covered in duct tape so it was a little difficult to see but it was enough. You were still weak so you couldn’t help out much but you helped hold the tarp in place over the breach whilst Mark taped it all down.

From now on you had to use airlock 2 when you go inside. You went over to the farm and crouched down; they had all been frozen, when you touched them they cracked and crumbled in your fingers. “So much for a good harvest,” you sighed and stood back up.

Thankfully, the potatoes in what was left of rover 1 had been protected from the breach. With the food you had, you would only have enough to last another 300 sols, not enough to make it till the next mission. You were now down to half rations every few days, so you were constantly hungry.

You were wrapped up in blankets on your bed. Mark was doing some inventory and you were meant to be sleeping but you couldn’t focus. Now that there had been a breach you were paranoid that it would happen again, the gap had only been sealed with a tarp after all. The wind was strong that night and the tarp was flapping in the wind, you couldn’t stand the noise. You grabbed a pillow and pressed it to your ears hoping to muffle the sound though you could still hear it. It grated on your skin and churned your stomach. You groaned and squeezed your eyes shut to stop the tears.

Just breathe, you thought, it’s just the wind.

* * *

NASA had finally set up communication between you and the crew on the Hermes. You and Mark were in the rover and this was the happiest you had felt in months, you eagerly waited for the message to come through.

_Dear Mark and Y/N, apparently NASA is letting us talk to you now and I drew the short straw. Sorry we left you behind on Mars, but we just don’t like you. Also, it’s a lot roomier on the Hermes without the two of you. We have to take turns doing your tasks, I mean it’s only botany and geology, they’re not real sciences._

_How’s Mars?_

You couldn’t stop yourself from crying and laughing as the message came through, happy tears fell down your face as you watched Mark type out a reply.

_Dear Martinez, Mars is fine. I accidentally blew up the HAB and almost killed Y/N (who did survive fyi), but unfortunately so did all of Commander Lewis’ disco music. Every day we go out and look at the vast horizons and watch the sunset, just because we can. Tell the others we said hello._

_Will do buddy._

* * *

The crew was scattered about the common area as Martinez read out the messages between him and you and Mark. Beck smiled as he listened. When Martinez read out that you had almost been killed he shot up. “What?” he exclaimed and the rest shushed him.

He bit his lip as he listened to the rest. He smiled when he heard that you and Mark would go out and watch the sunsets just because you could but he was still worried about you almost dying. He walked over to the screen, “Let me speak to Y/N,” he half asked, half demanded.

Martinez looked at Lewis for permission who shrugged a little showing her consent, everyone aboard the ship was aware of how important you were to Beck and she wasn’t going to stop him speaking to you.

_Martinez out, Beck wants to talk to Y/N_

* * *

_Martinez out, Beck wants to talk to Y/N_

You leaned forward in front of Mark to get to the controls. “Gimme,” you said as you wiggled into the small space in front of Mark.

“Or you could ask,” Mark said sarcastically with a small smile.

You shushed him and began typing.

_Hey Beckster, hope you’re not being too bossy up there._

_I told you not to call me that. What do you mean you almost died?_

_The airlock blew and I passed out and got severe hypothermia but I’m basically all better now._

_Are you sure?_

_Yes, doctor._

_Did you get injured anywhere else?_

_When we first got here I got impaled in the leg but that’s healed up nicely, I think._

_How bad was it?_

_It was fine, are you just gonna doctor me?_

_No, sorry._

_It’s fine, how are you doing? How’s everyone?_

_It’s quieter._

_AKA boring?_

_You wish, I can get work done without you bothering me to go get dinner._

_Shut your face you love me._

_Debatable._

_Rude, aren’t doctors meant to be nice?_

_Not to whiny patients._

_All I hear is you being bossy._

You grinned as you messaged back and forth just like it used to be when you were all together.

* * *

Beth watched as Beck messaged you, the crew didn’t expect him to read it aloud but she watched to the side. She hadn’t seen him smile so wide in months, since before they left you. Things were looking up.

A week later Vogel got a file he couldn’t open, when Beth tried to open it she saw it wasn’t a JPEG. “Does this make sense to you?”

“It’s a flight plan for the Hermes,” Vogel said confused.

They went to Lewis and they did the calculations, they realised it was a course change for the Hermes to go back to Mars to save you and Mark. Lewis called an instant meeting and everyone gathered around the table to listen to what she had to say.

“So what’s with all the cloak and dagger?” Beck asked.

“My guess is this goes directly against NASA orders. It would be mutiny, they can only do the course we’re on or do this one, we have a chance to force their hand. If we follow through with this it would be another 533 days worth of unplanned space travel. 533 days before you see your families again, 533 days and if anything goes wrong we die. That’s over 900 days of space travel.”

“Sign me up,” Martinez said instantly.

“Hold on cowboy, we’re military. We get back they’ll court martial us and I guarantee the rest of you will never fly in space again.”

“Good,” Beck said without missing a beat and leant forward. If there was a chance to save you then he was all in. “So are we doing this?”

Everyone looked to Lewis.

“Don’t look at me, this goes against direct orders. If it were up to me we’d already be going but the vote has to be unanimous.”

So, obviously, everyone was all in. “Let’s go get our guys.” Everyone cheered, they could finally do something to help you. Do something to make up for leaving you stranded. They could save you.

* * *

You had been here for about over a year now and you could see changes in yourself when you looked in the mirror.

Your skin was pale, yellowed and dirty. You had lost a lot of weight due to only eating half portions and you were sure you smelled. Mark was in the same state as you which was probably why neither of you had noticed just how bad your health was. Before, you and Mark had brushed your teeth once a week to conserve toothpaste but even that had run out a while back - now you had to wipe your teeth as clean as possible.

You couldn’t take looking at yourself in the mirror. You wanted to conserve water but you decided you deserved a much needed shower. Whilst in there you rubbed your skin red raw to get the grime and filth off you and rinsed your mouth as much as you could with the water.

When you got out you used the electric shaver to trim at your hair which had grown several inches since you had been here. You cut off all the split ends and back up to a more manageable length. You stared at your face in the mirror, you could hardly recognise yourself, your face was thin. Your cheeks sucked in and your eyes were almost sunken with a permanent shadow around them, your skin was dry and your lips were cracked.

Your near death incident had really taken a hit on your health, while you had told the crew you were fine you knew you weren’t. Your hands were always shaking, sometimes you struggled to breathe and you had a horrendous cough that you tried to hide from Mark. He still blamed himself for what happened so you didn’t want to give him another reason to worry or feel guilty. So you took a vicodin every day and hoped for the best, it helped with the pain but not much else. Rations were being cut smaller under NASA’s instructions and were only every few days. The small amount of nutrients made your bones weak and the old injury on your leg still ached. You knew it hadn’t healed properly but now you could really feel it.

All you could do was lay on your bed and wait for time to pass until you and Mark would begin a journey to the Ares IIII landing site. You had been back in contact with the Hermes for seven months, and while that had improved morale for you and the crew dramatically it wasn’t enough to stop you from slowly wasting away.


	11. Chapter 11

It was sol 461.

Yesterday you had made certain modifications to your rover; NASA genius plan was ‘drill holes in the top and hit it with a rock’ to make a hole. So you had done so which turned out to be harder than you thought with your limited strength. After you and Mark had made a big enough hole, you got a tarp to add a sort of balloon feature on top of it to make enough space to carry your supplies.

The journey would take one hundred days to get to the MAV. That was 100 days of living in a very confined space with Mark and only getting out for half the day to let the solar panels recharge the rover. You packed up everything you could - you wouldn’t be able to bring your laptop or any personal items because it would add too much unnecessary weight to the MAV launch. Though you could bring it with you for the journey, you would just have to leave it in the rover.

You collected all the photos of the crew you had at the HAB and placed them in your pocket. You had lots of pictures of Beck and of the crew together or in pairs. There were two favourites. One you had taken without Beck knowing when he was laughing at some joke or another and looked directly at the camera. The other was of the whole crew together - it had been taken back on Earth when NASA was getting everyone to do promotional adverts and pictures. A professional and serious one had been taken but you insisted on taking one where everyone was smiling. It looked more real than the official image; there was life in the picture and you had kept it pinned up by your bedside the entire time.

You had been scared you would forget their faces and smiles.

The HAB looked different now that you had packed everything away. The place that had been your home for the past year and a half was now open and uninviting. It seemed cold but you almost didn’t want to leave. It was odd, you had spent your entire stay hating it and wishing you could leave but now the time came and you were scared of the unknown.

If anything bad happened out in the rover you couldn’t just go back to the HAB, you would be stuck out there and have nothing to help you through it. If anything went wrong it was most likely that both of you would die. That wasn’t a risk you wanted to take considering the Hermes was already on the way back. You didn’t have a choice.

You came up behind Mark as he signed the wall where he had kept track of the days, he turned and held out the pen to you. You took the red sharpie and spun it in your fingers for a moment. You hadn’t really written anything since you finished with everyone’s experiments which was months ago. Leaning forward you hovered the pen over the wall, there was a certain sense of finality of signing the wall, something you weren’t sure you could stomach.

Taking a deep breath you tried to calm your nerves and pressed the pen down. You scribbled your signature under Mark’s, it was messier than it had been on Earth but still discernibly yours. Scrunching your nose you looked from your signature to Mark. “It’s messy, you think I could do it again.”

Mark huffed a laugh. “C’mon let’s get out of here,” he nudged you and walked away.

You put your helmet on and followed after him with a smirk. “Uh, Mark?”

He spun around to face you. “Yeah?”

“Helmet.”

It took a moment to sink in but then it clicked, “Space pirate,” Mark grumbled to himself and went back to get his helmet and stuck it on his head.

“Space pirate?” You chuckled as you opened the airlock for the two of you to step into. Since the accident, you had felt pretty antsy going in and out of the airlocks on the HAB, in case another one tore and then you wouldn’t be able to go in and out of the HAB.

“Technically Mars is international waters, and since we don’t have explicit permission from NASA to go and commandeer the Ares IIII MAV, we’re space pirates.” Mark explained as you walked over to the rover where everything was attached and rigged up, with rover one reassembled with wheels attached behind. “I claim captain. Captain Blondebeard.”

You snorted at the name. “Alright, Captain. If you get a name so do I,” you said as the two of you clambered into the rover. “How about Major Cooler-Than-You?” you grinned and took off your helmet, getting comfortable in the back of the rover.

Mark scoffed, “You think you’re cooler than me?”

“Hell yeah, leaps and bounds ahead of you in coolness,” you chuckled.

“And so modest as well,” Mark stated dryly, starting up the rover and pulling away from the HAB.

* * *

The next hundred days were spent basically the same as the last. You would travel at night while taking turns to drive then get out and sleep for 13 hours while the rover recharged.

“What are you gonna do when we first get back to Earth?” Mark asked after about an hours of silence.

You bit your lip as you thought, you had spent so much time just thinking about going home that you hadn’t really thought of what you would do once you got there. “Sleep for a day or two without fear of my house breaching and killing me in the night,” you shrugged.

Mark snorted and glanced back at you. “After that?”

“Go see my family, they’ve been taking care of my dogs whilst I was up here so I guess I’ll get them back. Maybe spend a solid week or two catching up on movies that came out in the last two years that we missed. What about you?”

“See my family I guess,” Mark didn’t sound so sure. “It feels like I can’t remember what I did for fun before we came up here,” he admitted quietly.

You nodded, “Yeah, it’s like you know you had fun and you remember going to bars and seeing people but now it just seems, I don’t know,” you trailed off, making a wild gesture with your hands to try and explain the feeling you couldn’t put into words. “Like it won’t be enough,” you eventually settled on.

* * *

Overall, the journey was fine. You couldn’t sleep as easily as Mark did when it was time for the rover to recharge so you took that extra time to make checks to the equipment you had lugged around which had all worked fine.

Sometimes you wandered a little away from the rover whilst Mark slept. Not too far, but enough to get a sense of some distance. Being cramped in a tiny rover for a hundred days wasn’t the best for your sense of freedom, the planet was covered in sand dunes and hills. Each time you climbed one you were the first person to do it, the first person to have touched this piece of land.

Occasionally, you thought you saw a flicker of a shadow in the distance. NASA had found evidence a few decades back of flowing water on Mars they just hadn’t found it yet. If there was water, then there could be life adapted to the harsh conditions, but you hoped that wasn’t true. Whenever you thought you saw something you would start to head your way back to Mark.

It was just in your mind. You had been here too long and had begun to see things to make up for the emptiness, you reasoned.

Still, it was hard to shake the feeling of being unsettled, and when you were quieter than usual Mark didn’t question it. So off you set again and again and again until, finally, you made it to the Ares IIII landing site. The sight of a MAV sparked a feeling of hope that had been lost long ago, you could actually get back up to the Hermes.

That hope quickly vanished when Mark got a message off NASA saying that the two of you basically had to dismantle the entire MAV and launch into space without windows or the front of a ship.

“Are they fucking kidding?” you asked after Mark read out the message.

He slowly shook his head, “Apparently not,” he puffed out his cheeks. “I’m starting to get the feeling that NASA doesn’t like us very much.”

You smiled, “You got that right. Right, let’s do this.” You sighed and put on your space suit, grabbed your tools and got out of the rover. The MAV seemed bigger than you had remembered them to be. Mark pulled the ladder down and let you go first. As you climbed the steps you thought about how you and Mark should have been climbing your own MAV a year and a half ago with the rest of the team.

Inside wasn’t exactly spacious, the entire thing was filled with chairs and control panels. “So how much of it has to go?” you asked as you walked around the MAV.

“Everything except two chairs,” Mark said absently as he turned on the control panel.

“Say what?” you paused. You let out a yelp as the window directly next to you was suddenly ejected at high speed from the craft. You placed a hand over your chest where your heart was beating rapidly. “Jesus, warning next time, Mark?”

Mark had the decency to look sheepish, “Sorry, Y/N.”

“It’s fine,” you rolled your eyes. “I want to do one,” you said eagerly and leaned over to eject another window, letting out a little laugh as it was propelled away from the MAV. Mark ejected the other window then got out his tools, the two of you began to work at unscrewing all the bolts from the control panels and chairs.

The bolts were already reinforced shut and in your weakened state, it became even harder to unscrew and remove everything. You managed to and the ground under the MAV was full of scrap equipment. The hardest was removing the nozzle of the MAV, you and Mark had to climb all the way up and try and push it off the MAV. Which, if you hadn’t guessed, was incredibly hard to do seeing as it weighed more than the two of you combined and was above you.

When you began hooking the tarp into place it finally hit you that you were going to launch into space under a plastic bag. You just had to focus on seeing the crew again, on seeing Beck again.

That final night you were camped out in the rover, Mark was making another log. “NASA keeps telling us that we’ll be the fastest people to ever travel in space. Because they know I like the way that sounds, it’s to distract me from the fact they’re sending us up there under a plastic sheet. Fastest people in all of space travel,” he huffed, “I do like the way that sounds.”

You chuckled to yourself in the back, “God, Mark, you’re such a typical boy.“

“Do you not like the way that sounds?”

“..Maybe,” you admitted.

“Knew it,” Mark said triumphantly.

* * *

Lewis had told Beck he would be the one to catch the MAV with you and Mark in it with Vogel as his back up. When they were on the side of the airlock he kept his eyes locked on the planet as if he would be able to see you down there. The MAV would be traveling incredibly fast and it would be hard for him to grab a hold of it, but damn if he wasn’t going to try his absolute best.

“Vogel,” he said quietly and turned off the comms. “If I’m out there and I need another few meters to get them you need to cut the rope,” he said quietly.

Vogel shook his head, “It’s not safe.”

“I don’t care,” Beck said forcefully. “I’m not going to get that close just to lose them again.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” Vogel insisted, but Beck knew that when the time came he would do it if he asked. The entire crew needed the two of you back and they would do anything no matter how dangerous to get you back.

* * *

It was time to leave the rover and go back to the MAV to take off - everything came down to this moment. Before you put on your suit which was newer than your old one and more bulky, you folded up the two photos you had of the crew that were your favourites. The one of Beck and the one of the whole crew, you studied the images for a minute before you pocketed them. In just an hour or so you would be seeing them again.

Once you were seated in the MAV the whole plan didn’t feel like it would work out. The tarp flapped in the wind and your chair was on the opposite side to Mark’s to even out the weight balance so you couldn’t even look at him or reach out to grip his hand for comfort during the launch.

Martinez would be controlling everything from the Hermes so nothing was in your hands. The comms switched on and the voices of your crew and static all flooded through at once, it was overwhelming.

“Watney, Y/L/N, how are you doing?” came a voice that you recognised as Lewis’. The first voice you had heard other than Mark’s in over a year and half.

“We're doing okay,” you responded shakily, you heard the crew all cheering on the other side.

The MAV began to rumble beneath you as you prepared for take off. Your hands and legs were shaking in nervous anticipation. Everything was in overdrive, you could hear various voices on the comms but couldn’t tune in.

“Watney?”

“Go.”

“Y/L/N?”

“Go.”

Your eyes filled with tears, after this isolation you would finally be going home. You weren’t going to die. You squeezed your eyes tight shut and clenched your jaw as the MAV took off. You always hated the feeling of launching, it was fine once you got up there but before then it was like hell.

The pressure change put a ton of force on your already weak body. You heard the tarp rip off the top of the MAV before you even left the atmosphere and you struggled to breathe. Focus, you pictured Beck. He was always there for you and made you feel safe, even if you had no chance with him he was your best friend in the whole world. He was able to calm your nerves which was what you desperately needed right now.

* * *

Beck was a nervous wreck, this whole rescue was resting on his shoulders. If he didn’t catch you then it would be his fault, once again, that you were gone and left behind for dead.

Through the comms he could hear Lewis trying to talk to you and Mark, he knew that the two of you had probably passed out from the massive amounts of pressure from the lift off but it didn’t stop the horrific feeling in his gut that your body wouldn’t have been able to handle the take off.

Lewis kept trying, just in case one of you woke up, the rest of the team joined in. “Mark? Y/N?” he tried but got no response of either of you.


	12. Chapter 12

There was a pain in your chest and you felt like you couldn’t breathe. The pain forced you away from the darkness and you peeled open your eyes slowly to see where you were. Above you, you could see the stars then, red, then stars again. As you regained your senses you realised it was the MAV spinning around, the motion made you feel sick and dizzy.

“Oh great I’ll wave at you guys as I go by,” you heard a voice say, Mark’s you realised. It sounded like you were underwater but very slowly you regained your hearing too.

“Mark?”

“Y/N?” Mark tried to turn his head to look at you.

“Y/N do you copy?” this time it was Lewis.

“Yes, I copy,” you said, your voice hoarse. “What’s this about us waving?” you asked.

“The Hermes is too far from the MAV to catch you,” you heard Beck.

“Beck?” you breathed, your emotions began to overwhelm you. It had been over a year and a half since you had heard his voice and it still made your spine shiver, it reminded you of sol 6 when you had been collecting samples.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

You bit your lip to stop from crying and closed your eyes for a moment with a small smile. Your eyes snapped open, “Wait, how far off?”

“68 kilometres.”

“Holy shit,” you breathed, so maybe this wasn’t a happy ever after after all.

“Commander Lewis,” Mark piped up, “We could find something sharp in here to puncture a hole in our suits and use the escaping air as a propulsion up to the Hermes.”

While that thought terrified you, you knew it would be better than watching the Hermes fly by. “I’m up for that,” you agreed.

“No,” Lewis shot down the idea instantly. “You would have virtually no control over where you go and you would be eyeballing it while travelling at high speed. I’m not taking that risk.”

You huffed a little as you tried to think of a way to have a small intercept range and velocity. Unfortunately, you had never really been good at science except for studying rocks because that didn’t really involve as much maths as chemistry and other ‘real sciences’.

That was when Lewis came up with the plan to blow up the Hermes. Well, part of the Hermes, and use that as a way to decelerate. “Are you guys blowing stuff up without me?” Mark asked and a moment later you saw him floating above you.

“Mark, what are you doing. Put your belt back on,” you scolded him, gripping more tightly at your own belt to make sure it was secure.

Mark continued on as if he hadn’t heard you. “You guys I don’t know, we’re pretty selfish. We want all the memorials to be about us, just us.”

“Yeah, we’re cooler than you guys anyway,” you agreed with Mark, you didn’t want the entire crew to blow themselves up just to try and save the two of you. They were more important. Martinez and Vogel had kids and wives, Lewis was married, Beck and Johanssen had glowing futures ahead of them. You and Mark didn’t have anyone of particular importance back home and it was better just the two of you than the whole team.

Still, Lewis didn’t listen. You listened to the crew intently as they worked out how to build a bomb, and Beck would be jumping around in space outside the Hermes. This, of course, terrified you. If Beck wasn’t inside the Hermes then anything could happen, if he accidentally let go he would just float away and no one would be able to help.

“Beck I swear to God if you let go of the Hermes I’m going to kill you,” you said sternly through the comms.

You heard Beck chuckle, “Noted.”

“I mean it,” you said quietly. “Be careful.” It didn’t ease the worry in your gut that something would go wrong so you decided to focus on the voices of the rest of the crew whilst they made a bomb to set off in one of the airlocks.

* * *

Their plan worked and the intercept velocity was reduced. Whilst they had been making the bomb, Martinez had accelerated the Hermes to close the intercept range. Unfortunately, you and Mark would still be 32 meters too far.

It was time to go out and get you; Beck was strapped into the chair and connected to the tether. “Visual on the MAV,” he reported. It was the moment of truth, he pushed off from the Hermes and floated out to you.

He used the controls to steer in the direction of you when suddenly he was jolted as the tether reached its maximum length. He tried to go further but couldn’t. “They’re still too far,” his voice wavered.

* * *

You gulped when you heard that. You unbuckled your belt and floated up to the gap in the ship next to Mark and you gripped the MAV tightly so that you wouldn’t float off. You could see Beck not that far from you.

“I’m gonna cut the tether,” Beck said determined.

“No,” you countered quickly. “We’ll come to you.” You swallowed your fear down and faced Mark, “Let’s be Iron Man.”

Mark locked eyes with you for a second then nodded, he got a pair of pliers ready to puncture his suit. “We’ll use the force from each other to try and stay straight,” he said.

You nodded, “Let’s do this.” Mark pierced his suit first and flew back at the sudden release in atmosphere, he had let go of the pliers which were now floating next to you. With a deep breath, you punctured your own suit, sending you flying back and crashing into Mark.

With a little bit of difficulty you managed to press your fingers down over your palm to seal the breach. You and Mark pushed up to the top of the MAV and gripped tightly to each other, you looked at each other once more then released your fingers.

Quicker than you had thought you and Mark flew through space. Admittedly, it was a lot harder to control than you thought but you soon got the hang of it. When Mark released his fingers so did you to counteract the pressure, in doing so you were able to go in the right direction but you were still all over the place.

You were close now, Beck was only a few meters away. You both reached out a hand, they just barely touched then you were flying past him. Luckily Mark was able to grab ahold of the red tether, not so luckily- you didn’t.

You kept going and you panicked, flailing around a little. For once your complete incoordination worked in your favour. You had accidentally released your fingers from the seal which pushed you towards them and the tether tangled around your leg.

Letting out a small grunt as the tether tightened uncomfortably around your leg, you curled up on yourself to grab a hold of it with your hands. With your hand securely around the tether you wrapped it around your arms and held on tighter than you ever had in your life.

At the end of the rope Mark and Chris had begun spinning and tangling in rope, they were headed straight towards you. As they spun closer and closer you braced yourself, with one more spin Chris in the chair crashed into and winded you.

Beck reached out an arm and gripped you tightly and pulled you close to him. A few moments later Mark was close enough for him to grab as well. “Hey handsome,” Mark laughed when he saw Beck and their helmets clunked together.

Seeing Chris again after a solid year and a half was indescribable. Your heart soared and all those feeling you had came back and hit you full force. Vogel was reeling you back in and the rest of the team were on the other side of the airlock waiting for you.

You were back on the Hermes, this was real and you weren’t going to die on Mars. Your ribs killed and so did everything else in your body but you were too happy to care right now. The airlock door closed and everyone came rushing in to see you. You and Mark took off your helmets, sure you smelled bad but nobody could care at that moment.

In the commotion of hugs and tears, you didn’t even really get to see Beck - he was there but he hung back. Thing was, during the rescue Beck had come to the realisation that he never wanted any harm to come to you, that he couldn’t live without you. When he had missed you it was the most scared he had ever been, it was out there that he realised that he loved you as more than just his best friend. Now he was terrified that you wouldn’t return his feelings.

Although he would have to see you eventually. He was the flight surgeon and he needed to do medical checks on you and Mark fairly soon to see just how bad the damage was. Eventually the team backed off and he was able to intervene, he told you and Mark to go limp so he could pull you through to the med bay.

Beck was being distant which sparked an unpleasant feeling within you. Had he realised over the past year and a half that he didn’t like you all that much? Did he somehow figure out that you had a crush on him and was now being distant because he didn’t know how to let you down easy?

You lay down on the med bay, the one that you usually sat on whilst you were waiting for Beck to go to dinner. Mark was on the other side of the room and he was being examined first, Chris bandaged his ribs and documented how malnourished he was. You didn’t really pay attention to it, you faced the side and looked out the window as you passed round Mars and watched it slowly disappear further out of sight.

Mark went out for a shower and Chris came over to you. “Hey Beckster,” you smiled up at him weakly.

Beck smiled down at you. “I told you not to call me that,” he laughed.

“Stop being so bossy,” you retorted. He helped you sit up and you winced as it jostled your broken ribs.

You had to take off your space suit, Chris helped you strip down to just your underwear. It wasn’t as if you were embarrassed at being half naked in front of him, he had done medical inspections on you before. What embarrassed you was the sight of your body so withered and dirty. Your ribs stuck out prominently and you could see bruising all over where your ribs and collarbone had cracked.

Chris carefully wrapped your chest up and checked out the old wound on your leg. He gave you a few pills to swallow which you did before he could even give you water. You flicked your eyes up to meet his blue ones staring intently at you.

Then something happened that you never expected to. Beck surged forward and planted a kiss on your lips, your eyes went wide and for a moment you didn’t even process what was going on, then you kissed him back.

Beck pulled back after a moment. “Sorry,” he mumbled, looking at the ground.

“What for?” you asked boldly. “For leaving me on Mars or kissing me?”

He stumbled over his words a little, “Both,” he settled on.

You shook your head a little, “Don’t be,” you whispered and pulled him back to you to kiss him. You felt him smile against your lips, he stepped forward and wound his arms delicately around your waist and you raised your arms to tangle your fingers in his hair.

After a minute you pulled back for air and you rested your foreheads against each other. “Took you long enough,” you breathed, “I’ve wanted you to do that for years.” Beck laughed softly and kissed you again.


End file.
